El Paso Burges will be one of the best teams the Tularosa boys basketball team will see all season.

And quite possibly the best team the Wildcats face in 2012-13.

Tularosa was able to hang with the Mustangs, who are ranked No. 10 in El Paso by the El Paso Times, for the first half and some the of third quarter. But Burges pulled away in the second half for a 60-37 win over Tularosa in the first round of Alamogordo High School's VFW Holiday Tournament Thursday afternoon.

The Wildcats will face the loser of the Mesilla Valley Christian-Valley game Friday at 4 p.m. in the consolation semifinals in AHS's Tiger Pit, creating a possible rematch of last year's Class 2A state title game between Tularosa and Mesilla Valley.

"The second half, they did get away from us," Tularosa first-year head coach Jimmy Voight said. "They opened it up on us in the second quarter, but our kids fought back. Got it down to seven or eight at halftime and I was pleased at that because we did know they were a good team. They got away from Tulie last year too and that's what I told the kids, it's just one game. They're good a team and this one game doesn't define our season and stuff. It didn't last year and it won't this year.

"We're up here playing good caliber basketball teams and a lot of these schools are larger classes, which I don't us as an excuse. Basketball is basketball, you got to go play.

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Burges (7-10), who beat Tularosa in last year's VFW Holiday Tournament as well, is a Class 4A school in Texas and with the exception of Mesilla Valley, all of the teams the Wildcats face will be a couple classes up.

The Mustangs held a 11-9 lead after the first quarter and after a Chance Brill bucket tied the game at 11-11, Burges went on a 13-0 run, with seven of those points from guard Aaron Jones, to go up 24-11 with 3:55 left in the second quarter.

But the Wildcats were able to come back and cut the lead down to 25-18 at halftime.

The Mustangs started getting in the passing lanes and causing turnovers in the second half, outscoring Tularosa 23-12 in the third quarter to go up 48-30 and maintained around a 20-point lead the rest of the game.

"Basically, what I told these guys was to play a little bit harder, lock down on defense and if you want to switch that, just jump through that screen and see if we can get a steal," Burges head coach Paul Gutierrez said. "And we had some guys that did a great job. Our point guard, Alvin Jones, started playing tough. Both on defense and on the offensive end. And then of course, Aaron Jones guarding (Jim Coleman) the entire game. We also brought up our big kid, (Kevin Brooks), to kind of trap, use his height, speed and agility. And that kind of helped out."

Coleman and Brill each scored 16 points for the Wildcats.

Aaron Jones finished with a game-high 19 points and Alvin Jones scored 15. Brooks was also in double figures for the Mustangs with 13 points.

Burges shot 61 percent from the floor in the second half (14 of 23) and 44 percent for the game (24 of 44). Tularosa was held to a 38 percent shooing percentage and took 20 less shots than the Mustangs.

Burges also outrebounded Tularosa 37-19 for the game, including 18 offensive boards that created second chance points.

Since Tularosa played for a Class 2A state championship in football, the Wildcats haven't had a lot of practice time, but are 4-2 to start the season with solid wins over Texico, Dexter and Class 3A Socorro.

"We haven't had (much) practice time and we're not going to get it until this tournament's over," Voight said. "Next week, for the first this time this year, we'll get four five consecutive days of practice. And that's where you get better, that's where I can teach my philosophy and my system. A lot of stuff we've been doing out here, we just had to make adjustments on the fly."

Contact Mark Rudi at mrudi@alamogordonews.com. Follow him on Twitter @mrudi19